1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the means for utilizing the concept of a one-spot coke quenching car to accept the coke pushed from the coke ovens of a horizontal coke oven battery and, more particularly, the means by which a coke oven can be completely discharged into a coke quenching car without moving the car.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Historically, horizontal coke oven batteries have been discharged from the coke side of a coke oven after the cooking process has been completed. A pusher machine is aligned with the coke oven on the opposite side of the coke oven battery from the coke side, i.e. the pusher side. The pusher machine pushes the coke through the length of the coke oven, discharging it at the coke side of the battery. Some means for guiding the discharging coke is positioned adjacent to the coke side of the coke oven battery. Conventionally this is a machine, riding on rails which run perpendicular to the direction of push, called a coke guide car (although it may perform additional functions such as removing and replacing the coke oven doors and sometimes cleaning those doors as well as the coke oven door jambs). The guide means on the coke guide car is no more than a chute aligned with the longitudinal axis of the coke oven, with sides and a floor that correspond dimensionally to the size of the coke oven doors.
The coke guide or chute serves as a conduit for the discharged coke into the top of the open hopper of a coke quench car. The coke quench car is located, by a locomotive, parallel to the coke side of the coke oven battery below the level of the floor of the coke guide and the coke oven to receive the incandescent coke as it is discharged. Past practice has been to slowly move the car along the coke side of the oven as the coke is discharged. The car is moved so the coke will, more or less, be evenly distributed from end to end of the hopper.
The increasing awareness of the pollution problems historically attendant to coke oven operations promoted advances in technology directed toward abatement of that pollution. Noxious gases were found to be escaping from the hot coke as it was being discharged from the coke oven. The direction taken to overcome this problem has been toward containment of the gases within a closed system followed by neutralization of the polluting qualities of those gases. One of the prominant methods of introducing a closed system is to place a hood over the whole process of discharging the coke from the oven into a likewise enclosed hopper of a coke quench car. The hood is evacuated of noxious gases by fans which transfer the gases to a means for treating them to remove pollutants. But to make this sytem feasible, the coke quench car no longer can be moved during the coke discharge. Thus developed the nomenclature of a "one-spot" coke quench car, i.e., a quench car which is stationarily positioned during the discharge of incandescent coke from a coke oven.
To accommodate the "one-spot" situation various designs of coke quench car hoppers have been devised, none of which has proved wholly satisfactory in attaining an even distribution of coke within the hopper of a one-spot quench car. Thus the design of the cars has generally progressed toward shorter, but wider and deeper quench car hoppers to accommodate the push from a full coke oven at a single spotting. However, the larger the car, the more it costs to build and the more the space needed to operate it. Such a direction in design produces diminishing returns in terms of economics.
There is need for a means to evenly distribute discharging coke within a one-spot quench car which allows utilizatin of standard sized quench cars but still allows containment of pollution.